Category Archives: Bodhicitta EN

HH Ling Rinpoche: Generating Bodhicitta

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HH Ling Rinpoche: The most important step in spiritual growth is the first: the decision to avoid evil and cultivate goodness within your stream of being. On the basis of this fundamental discipline, every spiritual quality becomes possible, even the eventual perfection of buddhahood.

HH Ling Rinpoche, New Delhi, India November 1979. Generating Bodhicitta

Bodhicitta and wisdom

The enlightened attitude, bodhicitta, which has love and compassion as its basis, is the essential seed producing the attainment of buddhahood. Therefore, it is a subject that should be approached with the pure thought, “May I gain enlightenment in order to be of greatest benefit to the world.”

If we want to attain the state of the full enlightenment of buddhahood as opposed to the lesser enlightenment of an arhat, nirvana, our innermost practice must be cultivation of bodhicitta. If meditation on emptiness is our innermost practice, we run the risk of falling into nirvana instead of gaining buddhahood. This teaching is given in the saying, “When the father is bodhicitta and the mother is wisdom, the child joins the caste of the buddhas.” In ancient India, children of inter-caste marriages would adopt the caste of the father, regardless of the caste of the mother. Therefore, bodhicitta is like the father: if we cultivate bodhicitta, we enter the caste of the buddhas. Continue reading »

Ven. Rizong Rinpoche: Bodhicitta and Emptiness.

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Ven. Rizong Rinpoche: The root of suffering should be fully understood.

Ven. Rizong Rinpoche: Bodhicitta and Emptiness.

Brief teaching conferred on August 28, 2009 by Ven. Rizong Rinpoche at Rizong Labrang, Leh, Ladakh, JK, India. Transcription and editing by Dr. Luciano Villa and Eng. Alessandro Tenzin Villa for Free Dharma Teachings Program for the benefit of all sentient beings. Treanslation by Mr. Tenzin Tzepag.

Ven. Rizong Rinpoche

These two subjects are very important. They represent very high teaching. For beginners teachings about sunyata or emptiness could brought craziness, as it is mentioned in the text. Especially we have Lam Rim by Atisha https://www.sangye.it/altro/?cat=14 and later by Lama Tzongkhapa https://www.sangye.it/altro/?cat=22, both suitable for beginners. Is very important to practice Lam Rim step by step. The main teaching of the Lam Rim is Lam Tso Sum: Continue reading »

Shri Bhadra: Refuge and Bodhichitta

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bbbhhVerses of Refuge and Bodhichitta by the Great Kashmiri Pandita Shakya Shri Bhadra

Motivated by the wish to free all beings,

Continually, I shall take refuge

In the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha,

Until the essence of enlightenment is reached.

With wisdom and with heartfelt love,

Diligently, for the sake of sentient beings,

I shall place myself before the buddhas,

And generate the perfect mind of bodhichitta.

http://www.lotsawahouse.org/indian-masters/shakya-shri/verses-refuge-and-bodhichitta

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu on Bodhicitta

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His Holiness the Dalai Lama con Chögyal Namkhai Norbu: “If the teachings are being explained intellectually, that which is being communicated is not intellectual.”

No one will be realized or enlightened just by studying the concepts of the mind. One has to find oneself in the state of knowledge, and really make this knowledge concrete. Buddha said, “I have found a knowledge that is very profound and very enlightened, a very peaceful state, beyond all concepts. And when I communicate this to others they do not understand”. This is knowledge, not something that is analyzed on the level of logic. I am not saying that logical terms have no use but it depends.

From the beginning, Dzogchen teachings have been explained in many ways by the masters. There are intellectual ways and then the symbolic way, which is connected with the tantric style. There is also the direct method: from knowledge directly to knowledge. This is what is called the transmission of the knowledge of realized beings.

It is essential to understand that even if the teachings are being explained intellectually, that which is being communicated is not intellectual. And if you do not succeed in transmitting this knowledge, everything just becomes dry words. Many people have a kind of conviction that they have some kind of knowledge. When I met my Master Changchub Dorje, I was really convinced that I had a lot of knowledge, especially of the Buddhist teachings. I did not think of myself as someone who was very stupid. When I met my Master for the first time, I had a lot of pride, because when my Master was teaching he was speaking to people who were not very educated. I was a bit blown up and thought, well, I know the sutras, the tantras and Buddhist philosophy. I really believed this was the meaning of the teachings.

Many people have this kind of attitude and think that they really do know something. But you have to understand what knowledge means. A good example of this was when Manjushrimitra met Garab Dorje. Manjushrimitra was one of the greatest scholars of that period in India and the principal guide of the Yogācāra school. He was considered the supreme Pandit. Continue reading »

Buddhagupta: An Extensive Commentary on the Four Immeasurables

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Padmapāṇi, Ajanta

Buddhagupta: An Extensive Commentary on the Four Immeasurables

Loving kindness, compassion,
Sympathetic joy, and equanimity—
How to cultivate with diligence
These great immeasurables, I shall now explain.

Focusing on immeasurable sentient beings brings about immeasurable accumulations, immeasurable qualities, and immeasurable primordial wisdom.

Immeasaurable Sentient Beings

We cannot calculate the total number of sentient beings, saying, “This is how many there are in the three realms.” And sentient beings are thus said to be immeasurable. As the Bhagavān said in the Noble Sūtra Teaching the Great Compassion of the Tathāgatas:

Son of noble family, the sentient beings living in a space the size of a chariot wheel, visible to a Tathāgata, are extremely numerous. But the gods and humans throughout the world-systems of the vast billionfold universe are not like that: the realms of these imperceptible sentient beings are immeasurable.

Continue reading »

The Everflowing Nectar of Bodhicitta

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bh11The Everflowing Nectar of Bodhicitta.
The Practice of Thousand-arm Chenrezig and the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation. The Mahayana Thought Training Annihilating the Demon of the Self-Cherishing Mind.

Tibetan root text by Langri Tangpa Dorje Senghe.

Introduction
What follows is an eight-verse teaching that contains the entire technique for transforming the mind into relative and absolute bodhicitta. It was composed by Langri Tangpa Dorje Senghe, a disciple of the virtuous friend, perfect in all knowledge, Kadampa Potowa Rinchen Sal, who in turn was a disciple of the holy lamp of the teachings, Atisha. Of his guru Potowa’s eight heart-sons, Langri Tangpa was the only one to receive the special instructions on exchanging oneself with others.

The practice of these teachings has three divisions: the preparation, the actual practice, and the completion. Continue reading »